Gautam Thapar taking Avantha group to greater heights

On a wintry morning in Kolkata, circa 1960, Karam Chand Thapar (KCT), patriarch of the Thapar Group, sat with his wife Mohini Devi at their mansion in Calcutta listening to a discourse by Swami Satyanand, promoter of the Ram Ashram network. Also present in the room was IP Anand, KCT's top executive. Now 94-years-old , Anand vividly remembers what happened next as he leafs through the sheets of time at his Hazrat Nizamuddin residence in New Delhi: "As we sat, a housemaid was asked to bring in KCT's newborn grandchild for the Swami's blessings.

The Swami took the baby on his lap, stared at his face and blessed him. Knowing that KCT was not very happy with the child's father, Brij Mohan Thapar, he told KCT- 'This child, by carrying your legacy to still greater heights, will totally erase all disappointments that you have been harbouring against his father .'" That child was Gautam Thapar, Chairman and CEO of the Rs 18,400-crore Avantha Group.

Drawing a parallel between Gautam and his late grandfather , Anand says: "KCT was not enamoured of his accomplishment in setting up the Thapar Group. He emphasised on the positive and constructive nature of his companies . Gautam reflects the same trait in giving Avantha a non-personal title, while concentrating on solid and futuristic direction."

Today, Gautam Thapar, or GT, is at the helm of a highly diversified group with companies such as BILT (paper), CG (engineering), Avantha Power & Infrastructure (energy ), The Global Green Company (food processing) and is known to pull the flock along while empowering professional managers. The horseshoe-shaped anteroom leading to his corner office houses a wall installation with five clocks indicating local time in some of the major geographies of its operations-Mumbai , Delhi, Brussels and London . The central clock, however, reads 'Patal' (The Netherworld ) and actually goes backward.

Impeccably dressed in a white cotton shirt with 'GT ' monogrammed on the sleeves, Gautam sits in a room lined by books and a sketch of a bull by the celebrated Sunil Das but is far from being bullish on any dilution in the group holding company, Avantha. Having pulled away from hands-on day-to-day operations, the 50-year-old GT's role today is very much in an advisory capacity. Yet, he maintains considerable holding across group companies, even among the two listed ones - 41% in CG (formerly Crompton Greaves) and close to 50% in BILT.

He has his reasons but in many ways, the 'chosen' Thapar (successor to uncle Lalit Mohan Thapar in 2000) is turning the clock back - to the glory days of KCT, when the Thapar Group was ranked third among the top five business entities of the country. In 2000, the market cap of the group was a mere Rs 200 crore, which today has bloated to Rs 20,000 crore. GT is categorical that "the Avantha Way cannot be the same as the GE Way or the IBM Way" .

The Outlier

In many aspects, GT's rise to the pinnacle of the Thapar group is the road on which the Avantha Way is paved. For one, he didn't get it on a platter. "Gautam has not always been at the corner office. He had to prove himself from a very junior manager," says Sanjay Labroo, MD & CEO of Asahi India Glass, who has known GT for over 40 years and was a year junior to him at Doon School. He was always considered an outsider as his father had opted out of the family business. "I had heard talk that the family tree was big enough to support some dead branches ," says GT, reasoning why he didn't want to return from the US where he studied chemical engineering at New York's Pratt Institute.

While still in the US in the early 1980s, group head and GT's uncle LM Thapar (LMT), sent for him. The call seemed strange since both uncle and nephew were not even on talking terms and Thapar Senior was actually grooming GT's nephew, Vikram, to take over the business. Nevertheless, Gautam relented and hesitantly took up the responsibility of resuscitating the sick pulp manufacturer AP Rayons. He turned around the company in record time, and thereafter, focused on the ailing flagship, Ballarpur Industries Limited (BILT). Along the way, he came across people like the late executive Bij Mohan Bakshi. "He taught me to reach for the stars while keeping my feet firmly on the ground," says GT, adding that it was tough grooming with regular visits to the factories.